Seven years before that awful day,When time shall be no more,A dreadful deluge shall o’ersweepHibernia’s mossy shore.

The green-clad Isla, too, shall sink;While, with the great and good,Columba’s happier isle shall rearHer towers above the flood.

Gaelic proverb; periphrastic translation by Dr. John Smith, Minister of Campbeltown, given in his Life of St. Columba (1798).

Literally:

Seven years before the Day of Doom (conflagration, destruction), The sea shall come over Erin in one watch (time, season, period), And over Islay, green, grassy (blue-green), But float will Iona (Hy) of Columba the cleric.

These are the three prayers of Patrick, as they were delivered to us by the Hibernians, entreating that all should be received on the day of judgment, if we should repent even in the last days of our life.

That he should not be shut up in hell.

That barbarian nations should never have the rule over us.

That no one shall conquer us, that is the Scots, before seven years previous to the day of judgment, because seven years before the judgment we shall be destroyed in the sea, this is the third.

Published by Christian Clay Columba Campbell

Christian Clay Columba Campbell is a Roman Catholic of the Anglican Use. As Senior Warden of the Cathedral of the Incarnation (Orlando, FL), he organised the process by which the parish accepted the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, petitioning to join the Catholic Church. The Anglican Cathedral is now the Church of the Incarnation in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.
Personal queries should be directed to me at eccentricbliss dot com.
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